Marathon effort

Some valuable lessons were learned today.
Once the usual routine had been completed yours truly set off on his bike hoping to reach his destination 53 miles away within the same day.
Actually I had set a target of 4 hours and as the weather was almost perfect things looked promising.
Lesson one learned was that the drinks bottle was rubbish as it had to be tipped up at an extraordinary angle to get any moisture out, in doing so the potential for accident skyrocketed, this will be changed to the one advised, a squeezy one with a flip top.
Another piece of advice to be followed is choice of snack while travelling. Having jenned up on whats best I ignored snack of choice by long distance cyclists, a sort of fruit based gel like a large soft jelly baby on account of A) cost and B) not being a prima donna type I could make do with a marmite sandwich and a mars bar. Hence the curious sight of a fat bloke wrapped in lycra wobbling along the Queen's highway scoffing a mars bar with oncoming car drivers all gawping and thinking that what they observed defeats the object of exercise. Chocolate toffee snack was difficult to eat, took ages and made a mess. It was almost impossible to breathe properly while eating and cycling and bits of chocolate found their way into all sorts of unlikely places making a mess so I can now see the point of a quick gulp of energy in the form of a lime flavoured jelly.
 Three hours twenty eight minutes and thirty three seconds after starting off I dismounted at my destination for tea and medals. I was happy with my effort and happy with what I had learned.
Perhaps the most important lesson of the day was that having a goat curry with extra green chilli's the night before a long distance bike ride is not a good idea.